Review: Licorice Pizza

Image courtesy of MGM.

During the course of its shaggy narrative, Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Alana (Alana Haim, of the band HAIM) spend a fair amount of time running. Occasionally it's toward each other, at other times in different directions, but their mode of travel is often on foot at a high sprint. 

This almost becomes a - for lack of a better word - running theme in Paul Thomas Anderson's funny and shimmering nostalgia piece "Licorice Pizza, which is apparently based on a set of stories and memories, albeit not Anderson's, but rather Gary Goetzman's, a former TV waterbed salesman, child actor and current producing partner of Tom Hanks. He passed his stories of 1970s Hollywood to Jonathan Demme, with whom he worked, and they made their way to Anderson, a Demme aficionado.

Not only are Gary, a precocious 15-year-old with a man's confidence, and Alana - an occasionally frustrated and aimless 25-year-old who meets Gary during school picture day as she helps with the photo setups - often literally running, but also frequently fleeing from scheme to scheme. After he hits on her and fails to woo her - but manages to pique her interest - during the school photo day, they become friends, sort of. She acts as his chaperone on a trip to New York for a film-related gig, and then follows him into a semi-lucrative business selling waterbeds out of a storefront in Encino.

Later, Gary hears word that pinball will once again become legal in Los Angeles, and being the schemer he is, decides to next go all in on an arcade, while Alana attempts to take up acting - and lies her way through a hilarious interview with a casting director played with insane verve by Harriet Sansom Harris - and then finds herself behind a telephone volunteering for L.A. mayor hopeful Joel Wachs (director Benny Safdie), the former president of the L.A. City Council.

It might seem unrealistic that a 25-year-old woman would want to spend so much time around a 15-year-old boy - and no, the relationship is not sexual; he clearly likes her, and she's more intrigued than aroused by him and sees a kindred spirit - and she even questions what she's doing spending so much time around Gary, but it's clear that their need to constantly break free from one moneymaking endeavor and transfer to another draws them together. The film includes gorgeous sunsets and swirling camerawork that add to the sense of possibility for both of these characters.

But also lurking around every corner is a sense of danger, whether it's a sequence during which Gary is mistaken by police for a murder suspect, a gas shortage that gives off an end-of-the-world vibe - during one lovely and surreal moment, Gary runs alongside a massive line of cars waiting for gas to the tune of David Bowie's "Life on Mars?," just one of many well-used musical cues in the picture - or the numerous lechers whom Gary and Alana stumble upon.

During the school photo day, Alana grimaces when the head photographer slaps her on the bottom, and most of the other grown-up men we meet aren't much better, whether it's the aging actor obviously based on William Holden (portrayed with a comedic touch by Sean Penn) who has come to believe his own legend; Wachs, who lets both Alana and another individual down during a crushing moment late in the picture; or the completely insane Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper in a delirious supporting role), the actual hairdresser-turned-Hollywood producer who once dated Barbra Streisand, and who sort of terrorizes Gary and pretty much anyone he comes across during an odyssey through L.A.

But the most dangerous moment - and the film's greatest set piece - involves a truck without gas slowly rolling down L.A. hills carrying our two leads and a group of youngsters while attempting to make a getaway following an act of vandalism on Gary's part. Anderson displays great talent in this scene by balancing tension, some belly laughs and a final cut to a character's face who has come to a realization.

Gary - and Alana, who gets roped into Gary's schemes - fits in with the hucksters, dreamers and schemers who Anderson loves to portray, such as Tom Cruise's Frank TJ Mackey in "Magnolia," Daniel Day Lewis's Daniel Plainview in "There Will Be Blood," Adam Sandler's Barry Egan in "Punch Drunk Love" and Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd in "The Master."

But "Licorice Pizza" has more of a sunnier vibe - and a "Boogie Nights" atmosphere - than some of the director's more brooding and brilliant work of recent years, and its kooky not-quite-romance at its center feels more in line with "Punch Drunk Love." Much like his previous work, it's not always clear which direction an Anderson film might head - and this one's shaggy nature gives it a freewheeling picaresque structure - but it's almost certainly always somewhere interesting. 

Also, it's rare that I can give a film this particular compliment, but in this case it applies: I've barely sifted through everything I saw in "Licorice Pizza," but I can't wait to give the picture - which is named after a 1970s-era chain of record stores and refers specifically to records themselves - another spin.